2014 batch 2: Currant mead (5) - Addition of currant juice

In the afternoon Saturday the 1st of November I took out the currant juice from the freezer. The juice was prepared this summer as described HERE. It is the steamed juice of red currant and black currant from the  ribes bushes in our garden. The volume is about 3.5 L and consist of approximately 1.25 L of red currant juice, and 2.25 L of black currant juice

Sunday the 2nd of November

In the morning I checked that the juice had thawed and the temperature was just below room temperature. I emptied the juice into a clean fermenter and then I just racked the batch onto it, stirred a bit, and closed it up. After the addition SG was 1.011 so there was plenty of sugar in. Secondly the total volume is now 23 L, so assuming that I was at about 15% ABV at the time of racking, I am now at 13%. Further more, if 1% ABV is generated from a gravity change of 0.00753, then the mead can potentially convert a gravity of 1.015 to 1.000, i.e. I am a bit short in sugar - 0.004 gravity units

So if 7.2 kg gives a gravity of 1.120 then I am 240 g of honey short. So I added 300g (actually 295g) which should add about 0.005 to the gravity.

About 5 hours later I measured gravity and pH again

SG: 1.011

pH: 3.41

Temp: 24.7 C

I noticed that pH dropped significantly when adding the juice - from 3.7 to 3.4. Also the mead is now foaming quite a bit so there was plenty of proteins in the juice also. I am not sure this was a good thing. If the fermentation stops completely, some not so pleasant compounds might be present due to partially degraded protein. Well, now I will just have to see if the fermentation will run for at least 24-48 hours more and then stop before the batch runs out of sugar :o).

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In all calculations I do not take into account that ethanol lowers the density of the solution. All measurements are with quite large uncertainty anyways, so adjusting for ethanol content by extensive calculations just seems like overkill.